Justice Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court (Photo: John Disney / ALM)

The late Justice William Brennan is said to have described the secret to success on the U.S. Supreme Court with one hand, five fingers outstretched, to show that, with five votes on a nine-member court, a justice could do anything.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested a similar approach when she told a packed Emory University audience Tuesday how she handles harsh criticism of her opinions. Of colleagues who have occasionally blasted one of her positions, she said, “I could have strangled them, but I need their vote for the next case.”

“You have to be able to reach compromise,” she said as she worked her way around the pews of the 1,200-seat Glenn Auditorium. Throughout the 60-minute event, she shook hands and offered hellos and hugs to judges, law students and a few children in the audience. (“I don't like to sit still,” she said.)

“Reasonable people can disagree,” she said a couple of times, chuckling at how court members sometimes write in a decision, “The answer is clear.”

“If it was clear, there wouldn't be a split” in the circuit courts that led the high court to take the case in the first place, she said.

Sotomayor largely steered clear of hot button topics in her conversation with one of her former law clerks, Fred Smith Jr., who now teaches constitutional law at Emory.

Asked why she wrote her memoir, “My Beloved World,” Sotomayor said she wanted “to identify those things that made me who I am.”

“Have you ever heard titans of business who talk about being self-made?” she asked, prompting laughter from the audience. “All of us have people who supported and guided us.”

Smith asked if the justice had ever felt like an outsider, and she responded, “Most of my life.” Growing up with diabetes, coming from a poor family to attend Princeton University and fighting for more Latino administrators at the school all left her with a sense of not belonging, she said.

She advised anyone who feels the same way to remember, “I may not belong 100 percent, but I'm there.”

Although Sotomayor is a fierce advocate for gender, racial and ethnic diversity and has drawn attention for being the first Latina to serve on the high court, she told one student that she is more concerned these days about a dearth of differing experiences on the bench.

Every justice went to an Ivy League school, she said, and the justices' religious backgrounds used to be only Catholic and Jewish, now with one Protestant. Only Justice Anthony Kennedy has any experience as a criminal defense attorney, and that involves only a handful of cases. She is the only justice with any experience as a state prosecutor. And no justice has any experience in immigration or environmental law, she added as examples.

“I worry more about that now,” she added.

As she continued to wander the room, Sotomayor stopped before a pair of grade-school- age girls in the front row and said, “Nobody should live their life as a bystander.”

Offering a hug, she said, “You're going to do bigger things than me.”